Unclean Spirits
by Bluebell Flame Echo
Summary: Petunia decides to make her niece into the perfect daughter. Said perfect niece rebels frequently. But the really interesting part starts when Petunia decides treatment such as being forgotten in a cupboard is not worthy of the perfect daughter. Other methods will have to be used to clean out the evil magic instead. Fem Harry. How much difference can a childhood make?
1. A Strict Upbringing (Just Penelope)

_Honey you're familiar like my mirror years ago_

 _Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword_

 _Innocence died screaming, honey ask me I should know_

 _I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door_

 _~ "From Eden" by Hozier_

* * *

Chapter One: A Strict Upbringing (Just Penelope)

Penelope lay on her living room floor, staring up at the ceiling, deadpan, as the priest said a bible verse standing sternly like a thunderhead above her.

"And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice -"

A massive cross hanging from rosary beads was wrapped around the priest's fingers holding the Bible. In his other hand, he was sprinkling Penelope with a tiny, opened bottle of holy water that looked kind of like those little containers of distilled water Penelope sometimes saw in the freezer section of drugstores.

Back and forth his hand moved, sprinkling the holy water across her form.

"Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God -"

Just in case it wasn't obvious, the evil spirit supposedly saying this currently resided inside the innocent-looking child's body of Penelope Potter. Her relatives the Dursleys wouldn't say much, but Penelope had gathered that every time something odd and impossible happened around her, her relatives thought it was a demonic presence within her manifesting itself.

In other words, they thought she was a witch, carrying magic - in the traditional Christian mythology sense of the word. They thought she was possessed by Satan, by a demon. They didn't want her to know they thought this, but Penelope wasn't stupid.

It was therefore their holy and solemn duty to rid her of this evil presence, in order to complete their great quest to make her The Ideal Perfect Daughter. She wasn't their daughter; she was their orphaned niece; but in their eyes that was hardly the point.

It wasn't anything ugly. They never beat their Perfect Daughter, nor locked her away and forgot about her. No, such treatment was not for their Ideal Perfect Daughter. But every time something odd happened, the exorcist priest was called out. By now Penelope considered him a dear friend, in the way one feels a tender sympathy towards someone they are around a lot who carries an impossible, fatal odd quirk.

"And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not -!"

Here, the priest's voice rose dramatically and he threw his arm up in a theatrical move that in actual effect made the holy water land uselessly about a foot from Penelope's head. Aunt Petunia, standing in raptures off to the side, cried out in horrified delight.

"Do you feel any different?" she asked Penelope eagerly in a hushed whisper, as though certain the priest somehow could not hear her during the ecstatic, trancelike throes of an exorcism.

"Oh, yes," Penelope lied matter of factly, "quite different."

"And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out."

Penelope knew all the favorite Bible verses for exorcists by now. This was Luke 4:33 - 4:36.

Penelope, it seemed, was a constant work in progress. She was always on her way to being The Ideal Perfect Daughter, but she never quite measured up - she never got there. Partly, it must be admitted, through her own efforts. Her own idea of who she was, and her relatives' idea of who she should be, seemed irreconcilable.

The result was a rather strict upbringing - one whose origins started long before she could remember…

* * *

"I can save her," Petunia said softly in a great epiphany, staring down at one-year-old infant Penelope Potter on the neat suburban kitchen table in front of her. The baby cooed, big eyes glancing at Petunia and then rolling around the kitchen, brightly taking everything in, little hands flailing, the polished soft yellow-brown of the burnished table shining strangely, it seemed to Petunia in that mystic moment, around her form like a halo. A cherubic angel just for her. "Vernon, don't you understand?!" she suddenly cried out, looking up excitedly.

"No, I don't," Vernon admitted from his own seat at the table, in what seemed to Petunia a very slow way. "I thought we had just agreed to take her in and squash the magic out of her. Keep her from -"

"Becoming her parents! Yes, exactly!" said Petunia impatiently. "Look, I know how this goes without help - without treatment. She'll grow up to become just like my dratted freak of a sister. But what if I helped her through it, with my knowledge and hindsight? What if I made making her normal and acceptable my special, valued project?

"What if she didn't grow up to become just like my dratted freak of a sister? What if she got the lucky chance to avoid becoming a witch that her mother Lily never got?"

Vernon's eyes were slowly changing as he turned over the idea in his mind. The Dursley couple shared a hushed, dramatic look across their kitchen table that November morning, broken only by the smashes of their infant son Dudley throwing bits of baby cereal and the bowl carrying it all over the room from his high chair.

"I have wanted a girl always," said Petunia eagerly. "What if this is my chance to create the perfect daughter, the way I already have the perfect son? She needs so much work - but I could do it! I could fix her!

"Just think about it," she said dreamily, putting her folded hands up to her cheek. "Lots of pretty, feminine little dresses… pink everywhere… etiquette lessons and excellent manners and neat little girlish behavior… quiet reading and sophisticated interests such as French music and ballet… lessons and chores in cooking and baking and gardening… oh, but of course, she would have to be treated very strictly."

"Yes, exactly. We would have to watch her closely for signs of unnatural freakishness showing through," said Vernon sternly. "But… I'll agree with what you think best, Petunia. Anyway, you know I believe in men being men and women being women."

"As do I," said Petunia stoutly, with a single nod.

"Now… should we rename her?" said Vernon uneasily. "If we're going to craft her into our own perfect daughter…"

Petunia went over it all in her head. The pause this created was tense. Even the Dursleys knew by now, after learning their niece's full previous story, that this was almost heresy to even think. Names like Charlotte and Evelyn briefly flitted through Petunia's head longingly…

But: "No," Petunia decided, "that man would never allow it," she added in disgusted, snobbish distaste, thinking of Dumbledore. "And besides." She sobered. "Lily's sacrifice… it was brave. I'll allow that. That brave sacrifice for her child is the only real reason I convinced you to allow me to take my niece in, despite everything acting against her.

"It would feel… wrong, somehow, to change the name Lily chose for her daughter," said Petunia stiffly. "Lily died for Penelope Potter. However freakish their world is, however much of a horrid witch Lily was. Lily died for Penelope Potter. Penelope Potter she shall remain. It is… one of my only concessions."

Petunia straightened and looked down neutrally at the table, pretending very hard that she had never loved her sister and did not care that she was now dead.

"So the name stays," said Vernon. "Penelope Lily Potter. No nickname.

"Just Penelope."

* * *

Petunia's desire to "fix" Penelope, to "make Penelope perfect," was only emphasized as Penelope grew into a young girl. That fanaticism and zeal inside Petunia only heightened.

Because not only was Penelope born a witch… Penelope looked almost exactly like Lily. The only major trait of her father's she seemed to have inherited was his eyes.

Penelope had long, straight, dark-red hair and a pale, heart-shaped face with high cheekbones. She had a long, straight nose, a small mouth, a delicate chin, and round hazel eyes. Even as a little girl, her body was small and slim, tiny and pixie-like.

And so Petunia tried. Even before the magic showed up, she tried in the other ways. She did her level best for the side of feminine dresses and the color pink, of etiquette and manners and general girlish behavior, of quiet reading and sophisticated cultural loves such as French music and the ballet, of chores such as cooking and baking and gardening. She erred on the side of strict treatment, becoming the stern, upright, quietly feminine aunt figure. She pulled every trick out of the book she could think of, tried for every opportunity and every teachable moment and every lesson and every chore. Right from the beginning.

And almost from the beginning there was conflict. Because Penelope didn't agree on most of these fronts at all.

Penelope was a tomboy, but more than that she was an imaginative one. She loved playing outside and getting dirty, she hated skirts, and she was always drawing pictures and talking about her dreams. An imaginative tomboy! These were two of the most horrible traits the Dursleys could think of from anyone, but most especially from a girl! Rousing, shrieking arguments between Petunia and Penelope could therefore often be heard in the Dursley household, each woman getting tearful and upset.

"I just want to be me!" Penelope would insist desperately, some hard spirit inside her never flagging.

"That's just who you think is you! It's not you!" Petunia would insist with equal desperation. "You're… you're someone else, someone more proper, just waiting to come out!"

Then she would sit down and begin crying into her hand. Tiny young Penelope would sigh, and come over to Aunt Petunia's seat, and pat her comfortingly on the shoulder.

Penelope was a complicated girl, however, not easy to fit into one box. She was not all the rebel, not all the way through.

Penelope was down to earth and she didn't believe in following rules for their own sake - she only followed the rules that made sense to her, and often wanted to know why she was supposed to do this thing or that thing. She was interested in concrete skills and tools, loved having fun, and preferred to see the future optimistically. She was from the beginning a tiny and precocious cynic, however, when it came to human nature. She took pride in her imagination, quite fiercely, and also in being bold and rebellious. She took equal pride, however, in her resilience - her calm, quiet adaptability to negative circumstances.

She was impulsive, and wanted to do big, impressive things and have amazing talent in whatever she took up. She was always giving of what she had, quite kindly and openly, to other people. She was graceful, quick, slight, and immediately took to almost anything physical. She was cripplingly blunt even as a young child and not much of a diplomat. She was friendly, but very quiet and reserved.

Penelope had incredibly sharp, keen senses. She could tell apart different textures of cloth before she had words for what each one was, could taste and even smell even the tiniest ingredients in foods and recipes, could hear the most minute tones in a person's voice, and the first thing she learned was the names of colors. Forever afterward, she never just called something purple - it was always "deep plum" or "violet" or "puce." She found many of Petunia's clothing choices stoutly "repulsive," knowing exactly what she liked and always recommending something she felt was better - usually something more baggy and comfortable and not as violently pink or purple, hence her inherent tomboyishness.

She could be hard to read and harder to understand. Penelope did not express herself with words, but with actions, unusual in a young girl. She hardly ever spoke as a young child, though when she did it was always in complete, sophisticated sentences. She saw the world through her sharp senses, and only expressed herself in nonverbal ways. She could be incredibly reticent and stoical.

Impulsively artistic, Penelope was prone to being suddenly seized by whirlwinds of action, and in that state she could work for hours seeming completely oblivious to fatigue or even pain. It was not that she was hardened; it was that when seized by a true action, she stopped noticing things like fatigue and pain until the impulsive urge was through. She never planned out anything, not even things she was supposed to like cooking recipes assigned to her by Petunia. This trait was why she so loved and was so good at forbidden activities like drawing; her lack of care for the rules and getting along, her quiet pride in being rebellious, was why she flouted such rules so often. It was also why she hated assigned rules and deadlines, and anything else where she was locked into one action with little time to be creative and sensory and no space to move around.

Penelope was incredibly kind, very giving, especially to those she felt were in pain. Another's pain could move her like little else could. Even as a little girl, she loved babies, animals, and she had a chronic, impulsive (and remarkably dirt-ridden) love for the outdoors. Anything living and gentle seemed to inspire her, and she talked to babies and animals just as though they were regular people whenever she encountered them around others. (This trait could embarrass Petunia, who laughed nervously about "children being so eccentric and silly!")

Friendly and soft-spoken, despite all this Penelope put up with the Dursleys remarkably patiently. In a weird way, the Dursleys were her anchor and her tether to a sterner reality, and she was capable of putting up with a great deal of interpersonal tension in order to basically get along. With her family, she could be a good friend and playmate if they let her, though she was very reserved - and even for the people who lived with her, hard to get to know. She just kept so much inside, never speaking it sometimes even in her own mind.

Penelope's brain was a vivid inner mindscape full of sounds and colors. She spoke even to herself very little - there was no great flow of wordage she was necessarily holding back. She spoke through an act - preferably a creative one. And she only took charge in any situation when there was a project she felt she wanted done.

Petunia did begrudgingly put up with many of Penelope's eccentricities, fonder of her as her "work in progress daughter" than she liked to admit. Just as Penelope put up with learning Petunia's stupid lessons, Petunia put up with Penelope. She gave Penelope an upstairs bedroom, eventually caved in to the basics of most of the essential things Penelope wanted (in clothing and food, for example), and put up with Penelope's likes and interests in ways she had to and ways she felt were properly parental and safe.

This trend would continue as Penelope grew more defined likes and interests when she grew into an older child.

And so Penelope did have some basic good memories of birthdays, holidays, vacations, and outings with her family. She did get some gifts, she did get small birthday celebrations, and she did get times with a basic functioning family unit, little adventures out in the world. It was never a perfect or ideal situation - she was treated strictly and there was everybody's quirks to put up with - but she was familiar with the essential elements of family celebrations.

Still, with Petunia, there was often much histrionics and nagging and complaining where her "difficult" niece was concerned.

Vernon treated Penelope with a distinct lack of aggression and a general aura of paternal protectiveness. In his own way, he was begrudgingly fond of her. He had hated her father, but Penelope looked and acted refreshingly little like her father, and so Vernon eventually began to look past his prejudice and see who Penelope truly was - and in his own reluctant way, he became fond of that, as he helped raise her. In general, he saw her as a female child who needed strict watching-over, but also stoical protecting and sympathy.

In the end, he became the sarcastic, exasperated father-uncle figure around the house who was constantly almost up to here with the histrionics and drama of his wife and his household, and the silent, stubborn, intelligent rebelliousness of his niece-daughter. He made many sharp, exasperated comments and was often the grumbling, calm one, not having as much history with magic nor Penelope's parents - nor, perhaps, having as much personal responsibility for Penelope, who his wife had taken over. Privately, he counted himself lucky that he could afford to be the fond, exasperated, sarcastic father-uncle.

Dudley perhaps went through the vastest changes when Penelope entered his household.

He was not allowed to either hit or roughhouse with someone who was essentially his sister figure; she was not allowed to look at all ragged. This was unheard of socially, far different from the general situation with brothers and boys, and anyway Petunia and Vernon were protective of a female Penelope. "No!" a surprised Dudley often got snapped at in the beginning as a baby. "Don't hurt your sister!"

It was a mantra that would become ingrained into his brain by the time he was an older child. Just as boys were capable of hurting a girl like Penelope, he learned even on an unconscious level, boys never should.

Dudley also began to be disciplined more after Penelope became established in the household. Penelope (who was after all treated very strictly but also an established portion of their family with her rightful "single daughter" place in the social hierarchy) became remarkably well behaved… and Dudley began to look badly in comparison. People started saying, "Oh, that awful little boy. Look at how well behaved his sister figure is."

When Petunia and Vernon realized uneasily that they couldn't rightfully brag about their perfect son anymore, the disciplining began.

Dudley grew up to be far less spoiled as a result. Then and only then, he learned - only once he'd become a better person - was it okay for his parents to brag about him to others once again.

And so the tantrums left, as did the lack of discipline and motivation, the endless numbers of broken toys and gifts, the bullying, the food addiction, and the budding television and video game addictions.

Dudley Dursley, of an age with Penelope Potter, became a vastly different person.

He still had enormous, rambunctious physical energy and appetite, but learned to handle both more healthfully and in a better way. He became a muscular, sporty large blond boy, not an obesely overweight and ruddy-faced one. He became less cruel and a bit smarter about his teasing, mischievous sense of humor.

He and Penelope "roasted" each other a lot - their constant sparring of sarcastic back and forth could make strangers erupt with hilarity just as much as it embarrassed their parents. But Dudley and Penelope knew the score: it was all in good fun.

In fact, Dudley grew up to be very protective of Penelope as his tiny, firebrand sister figure. The mantra never stopped being repeated in the back of his head: "Don't hurt your sister."

Three main things happened next: Dudley and Penelope grew both older and more well defined as people with interests. Dudley and Penelope went to school and made primary school friends.

And Penelope first manifested what she would come to think of as her magic.


	2. Growing Times

Chapter Two: Growing Times

Penelope grew not only as a child, a girl, and a budding woman, but as a student at school.

Her clothing became a combination of casual and tomboy styles - in the actual female fashion style sense, as per her Aunt Petunia's exasperated command. She wore lots of neutrals, baggy sweatshirts and sweaters, nice jeans and dark shorts, occasionally even a very loose A line skirt in a soft or dark color.

Her dark-red hairstyle became a tousled bob that went just past her chin. It was easy maintenance, with built in shaggy, blunt layers, just brush and go. All of Penelope's fashion grew to be low maintenance and inexpensive, but it was nice looking on her. Somehow, with her quiet reticence and free spirit, it suited her.

She also grew to have her hobbies, the interests filling and decorating her big upstairs bedroom.

The closest thing to art, visuals, and imagination the Dursleys ended up allowing her was music. But on the plus side, they let her listen to what she wanted, and she had a headset and mixed tape cassette player to listen to music on privately, because the Dursleys didn't like her listening to music out loud a lot. Penelope liked both jazz and punk, so in music lessons she chose to sing and play the keyboard, a refreshingly small and portable instrument.

She also formed a love of reading. Penelope was not a straight A student, but she did get good grades and she was intelligent. Her favorite books were nonfiction. She loved narrative journalism, travelogues, science, and horror nonfiction.

She didn't like movies, mostly because she wasn't allowed most kids' movies. They were too "imaginative" on a visual level and her aunt and uncle never showed them.

She did take up an interest in tabletop gaming. Another thing she loved was vintage scrapbooking. She took up rollerblading and rollerskating, and even joined roller derby at the local junior level, the game modified for children so nobody got hurt.

Aunt Petunia sat in the stands, half hiding behind her handbag and shrieking anxiously throughout many an exciting roller derby session as a grinning Penelope raced and ghosted at high speeds, small and fast, around the rink.

And finally, she collected. Penelope had two collections - She collected radio types and models, and she collected sea glass. Sea glass was pieces of glass, mostly from old shipwrecks and old pieces of trash thrown into the ocean, that had broken away underwater, been smoothed and polished into a brilliant color by the sea and the waves, and then washed up onshore gleaming and beautiful.

Beauty out of trash - she liked that.

Her upstairs bedroom and the window-side desk inside it both became incredibly messy, things scattered everywhere, something her aunt and uncle were constantly complaining about.

In food, she liked chocolate and hearty, warm, filling comfort foods. In drinks, she liked strong, sweet tea and hot cocoa. Her favorite drink as a child was hot cocoa and she often carried around heated thermoses of it as she went about her day doing school or hobbies.

Aunt Petunia hated pets and their mess, so to satisfy her love for animals, Penelope instead started volunteering time at a local animal shelter. To satisy her love for little kids, when she was older she started volunteering time leading groups of children at a local play center. It was an unusually extroverted activity, but she liked leading other, younger kids in art and nature projects. The Dursleys allowed these activities to make their family look good, not knowing the exact details of just how artistic Penelope was at the play center.

It was quite amazing how stubbornly oblivious they could choose to be.

Penelope also made friends at school when she started attending a nice primary prep school. She had several groups. She got on well with the boys who played football at recess and the tomboys. She was friends with the school's music group. She made friends with the bookworms and library people. She also made friends in tabletop gaming at the local shops and in her junior roller derby sessions. And then there was a whole school group of vintage fanatics she was friends with.

She was also friends with the older people (teenagers, mostly) at the animal shelter and with the younger kids at the play center. So between everyone she had plenty of sleepovers, birthday parties, pool parties, times out biking, and play-dates to attend.

There were of course some awkward conversations. Every time people asked about her parents or the lightning bolt scar on her forehead, she had to tell them the only line she knew: She had gotten the scar in the car crash that had killed her parents when she was a baby. She had no memories of her parents or her infant past and her aunt and uncle pretended to be very deaf and obtuse whenever she asked about them, so this was all she knew.

She didn't even have a picture.

Penelope's final friend was her and Dudley's babysitter whenever Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had date night. This babysitter was a kindly little old cat lady named Mrs Figg who smiled at them a lot and baked them sweets, letting them play with and pet her cats.

There was one last social connection Penelope had, and this one was rather odd. Strangely dressed people - in a violet top hat, or a long purple coat, or a wild green dress - often seemed to know her in the streets. Total strangers, always dressed in this bizarre way, would often wave at her from a great distance away on a sidewalk or a bus, or would even bow to her or come up and shake her hand. Then they'd walk away without a word.

Penelope always leaned over to look closer at their retreating backs, but the minute she blinked, these people were always gone. She could not explain this phenomenon.

Dudley had his own social life once at school. He was in the same school, class, and year as Penelope, every time in primary school. His grades were not great, but were acceptable enough to pass. To get rid of physical energy and satisfy his desire to fight, he took up wrestling and boxing. He liked video games. Dudley was definitely a guy's guy, and had lots of guy friends he laughed, snickered, pushed around, made fun of, and joked bawdishly with, a wide, mischievous grin over his face.

No one ever picked on Penelope at school. Dudley quickly became so confrontational over his sister, and so dangerous and angry in a fight, that it never went well for whoever poor sod had decided to make fun of her that day. He just kept getting bigger and more muscular as he grew, which did not help matters for his opponents.

* * *

Especially as Penelope had all this cooking, gardening, etiquette, and manners training, it was inevitable as she grew that she would be included in family dinner parties, from times with her aunt and uncle's friends to times with her firm director uncle's corporate clients.

It was perfect for the Dursleys. They would brag about their son figure and then brag about their daughter figure. There was a neat symmetry to the way it all worked out for them.

For Penelope, this was just more of trying to fit her into a neat little box - something she hated. Penelope found dinner parties dreadfully dull and she grew to despise them.

More trying even than this, however, were the times when Aunt Marge came to visit.

Aunt Marge was Uncle Vernon's sister, a loud, larger than life woman with ginger hair who bred nasty little bulldogs out in the countryside and always insisted on bringing the worst-tempered one along with her for her stay in the guest room. She drank a lot, said whatever was on her mind, and was terribly rude about it. She had an awful temper, one that easily outstripped even Uncle Vernon at his worst and one that neatly matched her prized and beloved bulldogs. She openly advocated hitting children, so it was a good thing she wasn't married and she didn't have kids. Her best friend back home was a retired Colonel and she was deeply defensive of the military and patriotism, something that some might consider her one truly good point.

It said a lot about how terrifying Marge was that Uncle Vernon never dared to suggest that his sister - with her deep, loud voice and even louder opinions and animals - was not properly feminine enough to suit his tastes.

Aunt Petunia was frostily polite to Marge, but secretly hated both her and her messy, drooling dogs.

Marge did treat Penelope fairly well, as a favored daughter figure. Like Dudley, Penelope grew up with bear hugs and gifts of money and birthday presents from Aunt Marge. There was certainly no cruelty from Aunt Marge in either behavior or wordage and insults.

But Aunt Marge was that relative who made endless tiny, critical, annoying, naggy comments about everything to do with Penelope in a faux polite manner. She congratulated Petunia and Vernon often over Penelope's head about "making the girl normal" and insulted Penelope's late parents equally as often. Penelope hated Marge's faux-polite comments and veiled insults, sitting through it all with silent gritted teeth, and always felt somehow defensive of the supposedly awful parents she did not remember.

One night Marge was visiting and she was saying, "Drunks, probably, unemployed drunks, awful people -" And she'd been going on for about five minutes in that vein that evening over too much drinking about Penelope's horrible dead parents.

And finally, Penelope felt a sharp spark of frustrated temper, unable to fully hold her anger back anymore. Her fists clenched in her lap.

Suddenly, the light sparked out and everybody shrieked; it was as though the circuit had blown a fuse. At exactly the same moment, a very fine piece of porcelain and crystal on a high kitchen shelf suddenly exploded.

The next couple of hours left both Penelope and Dudley deeply confused. Marge was hurriedly ushered away in the car to catch a train out of their Surrey city suburb and back home to the countryside that very night. Then, back at home, Petunia and Vernon turned to Penelope thunderously in the doorway.

"Er… what?" said Penelope, deeply confused.

"You did that," said Petunia slowly to Penelope in a dangerous voice.

"You think Penelope… blew something up with her mind?" said Dudley disbelievingly.

"It does seem a little impossible," said Penelope uneasily.

"Yes," said Vernon meaningfully, "it would seem that way, wouldn't it?"

This was clearly supposed to mean something, but Penelope was still bewildered.

Then it all became clear - her relatives were either onto something or slightly insane: "I've been waiting years for this moment," said Petunia with deadly seriousness. "It's time to call in the exorcist."

They thought their niece was possessed by demonic magic. The endless exorcisms and bouts of strange happenings were about to begin.


	3. Secret Identity

_Stories told to me and stories told to you_

 _Did you ever feel like they were ringing true?_

 _And all their words for glory_

 _Well they always sounded empty_

 _When we're looking up for heaven_

 _Looking up for heaven_

 _Way down here upon the ground_

 _When we're lying in the dirt_

 _There's no looking up for heaven_

 _Looking up for heaven_

 _Not everything had gone to plan_

 _But we made the best of what we had, you know?_

 _Passing the drink from hand to hand_

 _We admit we really know nothing at all_

 _~ "Glory" by Bastille_

* * *

Chapter Three: Secret Identity

Their argument was definite: Both her aunt and uncle hated magic. Uncle Vernon didn't like it anymore than Aunt Petunia did. So the magic would have to go. On this point they were a united front. It was Aunt Petunia who seemed to come up with both the idea, and the decision.

Aunt Petunia refused to just throw away her pet project, lock her up somewhere, and forget about her. So she had to go to more alternative methods of getting rid of magic, believing every silly myth that existed about witches. She began trying to "cure" her perfect, beloved daughter through myth based rituals.

In other words, exorcisms.

Which brought us back to the beginning, Penelope lying deadpan on the floor with Aunt Petunia standing on one side of her and the priest chanting on the other, sprinkling holy water.

She never felt any pain. Penelope was pretty sure nothing was happening.

But she had caught on this idea: that her relatives thought she was a magic witch. Weird things happened, her relatives reacted like she was a witch filled with magic. That was how it worked.

So the idea had been sparked off in her head of herself being a witch, even if she didn't quite believe it at first.

* * *

What really changed was a flyer she saw on the prep school notice board one day. They were showing magic-themed kids' movies every afternoon in the school library for a solid month.

Curious about these movies she had always been denied, Penelope went. She sat down in the darkened library, and she watched and listened amid crowds of others - finally got to enjoy the things it seemed all kids were supposed to be able to enjoy.

She was taken through stories of magic and enchantments, princes and princesses. She wasn't entirely sure how this magic thing was supposed to work - she may be just a lone mutation, just some lone witch who existed outside of any set world.

But she was inspired by the stories she saw before her, found within them acceptance and even - among so many of the sorceresses and princesses dropped into strange lands and amazing happenings - people to aspire to.

She sat entranced, wide-eyed and beaming, before each movie in increasing delight in that darkened school library.

She decided she wanted to try being like some of these characters. Just like she did art at the play center, now she saw kids' movies in the school library.

And Penelope decided she wanted to try magic.

* * *

At first, her bouts of supposed accidental magic were nothing special. She felt some strong emotion, and something around her shrank or grew, exploded or changed color or shape, even floated or vanished altogether. This happened countless times after that first night with Aunt Marge. Every time, another living room exorcism was called in.

Around this same time, something else strange happened. She went to a new friend's house for a birthday party. She was standing in an empty room and heard whispering. She looked to her left - but all that was sitting there was a snake tank.

Then the snake opened its maw and spoke words, in a low, hissing voice. Penelope knelt down and began conversing with it, and found she could talk to snakes. It was a natural ability, as if inborn.

So she became pretty sure she could do the impossible. But after several afternoons sitting frustrated on her bedroom floor and not coming up with anything remarkable after hours of trying, she had to try something else.

Something must happen whenever she caused something remarkable.

After much searching around in her memories, she found something that was there in almost every single case: the catalyst of strong emotion.

So she began reaching back in her memory bank for things that made her deeply emotional. Slowly, she began learning to control her magic, doing things consciously - with her mind or a wave of her hands - instead of unconsciously. She tried all the same things: shrinking and growing items, changing their color or shape, making them explode, floating and moving them without touching them, even vanishing them from existence.

Each skill came with practice. So she became a budding purposeful witch who could talk to snakes.

But the memory that evoked the strongest magic only came up when she really reached back into her conscious memory, to a time before the Dursleys. And it was very strange. She wasn't sure why it invoked such a severe reaction, mostly because she didn't know what it was a memory of in the first place.

It was a memory of a flash of bright green light, like a loud firework suddenly bursting right before her eyes. Something hit her, and she felt a terrible pain in her forehead, and then - nothing.

Supposedly, this must be the car crash that killed her parents. But with her new abilities, she began wondering about her origins… When she looked back over that memory, "car crash" didn't feel right.

Either way, when she thought back to that moment - her earliest memory - it produced the most powerful magic of all.

Next she decided to master snake language, while she was at it. She had no snake to practice with - she couldn't pay for the zoo every day, or bother her friend's house but sit in his empty room all day - so she had to make do. She eventually figured out she had trouble speaking snake language when not looking directly at a snake.

Well there was an easy solution for this. She printed out a photograph of a snake from her prep school computer lab, and spent many an afternoon in her empty bedroom speaking to that image, pretending it was real and moving - then listening to herself. When listening carefully, she heard that she was hissing, not speaking English.

She eventually deciphered that different sounds meant different things.

So she developed a whole language guide, buying a little brown leather-bound journal to copy it all down in. She made a series of symbols, each one signifying a different snake sound, and then she wrote down different combinations of symbols and what each combination meant in English. Slowly, she began the ability to do snake speak consciously, even when not looking at one.

But her last bit of magical discovery surprised even her.

She eventually started paying attention to her dreams. Penelope's dreams had always been very odd and vivid, full of strange images. But if she paid close attention enough, she began to notice that some of them would predict future events - they were prescient - but in an oddly symbolic way.

For example, if she were about to get grounded, she might be chained to a bed in her dream with a floating dishcloth in front of her. If she did not do the dishes this coming week, she would be grounded.

Penelope bought another leather-bound journal and began writing down each dream she had, learning slowly over time to symbolically interpret each one. Sure enough, as she watched, all of her most vivid dreams - they were very distinctive in vividness - symbolically predicted the future. So she began to interpret dream symbols and prepare for each eventuality through her second journal.

She learned something remarkable: when prepared for the future, she could change what she'd seen.

Penelope altered her dream-state entries in this second journal with a second kind of entry. She began methodically copying down each magical thing she could do and documenting her ideas and studies into what brought about what she called "thought-magic."

Since these journals were obviously dangerous to be left around the Dursleys, who just thought she was spending more time in her room since getting close to her preteen years and getting that oh-so-lovely Talk, and who had no idea she was experimenting with magic…

She hid the snake picture and the journals underneath a loose floorboard beneath her bed, the snake picture with an explanation of methodology tucked into the snake-speak journal.

Finally, all that nonfiction reading was coming in handy.

Interestingly, once she started using her magic so consciously, she stopped having accidental spurts unconsciously. Her amazed and delighted aunt and uncle assumed she'd been "cured." Their exorcisms and teachings had worked.

"You're a true part of our family at last," said Aunt Petunia fondly, embracing her niece one day in the kitchen as Uncle Vernon stood back proudly and Dudley watched from the kitchen table.

Penelope smiled, and hugged her aunt back, and never said a word. She assumed that was it, you see. She'd figured out there was nothing Satanic about what was probably a scientific mutative ability to manipulate matter, so she thought that her magic would never have be touched on again - that she was alone in the world, and in the clear.

Innocence was bliss. The mistaken Dursleys never had to know. What they didn't know couldn't hurt them.

She was still Penelope Potter, regular Penelope Potter, in all other aspects of her life, quiet and kind and vintage Penelope with the hot cocoa thermos and the muted sweaters with scattered animal hair and the shaggy red hair and the headset for music and the skids on her knees from roller derby and the messy bedroom. It was not a lie; that was who she really was. So she assumed that this would be the rest of her life: magic and so-called witchery in secret, regular life in public, and possibly she'd never get full, true answers as to her parents and her past. She was like a superhero with a secret identity.

Primary school ended; summer came and with it fun times and last hoorahs with previous school friends. Penelope's eleventh birthday loomed, and she and the Dursleys began to talk about boarding school secondary schools - the Dursleys wanted a fancy finishing school, Penelope argued passionately for a more academic institution (secretly dreading more horribly girly etiquette lessons but loving nonfiction reading and learning).

Penelope thought her foray into her magic and her past was over. How very wrong she was.


End file.
